Rewinding Fate--Take One

 Rewinding Fate—Take One

 

Only it wasn’t Anthony

Anthony was dead.

This guy was somebody else.

 

Katya's calculations
were elegant.

Almost.

If Gina
never met Anthony,

there would be
no falling in love.

No impossible future.

No time machine.

No cat
with opinions
about quantum mechanics.

Simple.

Except...

Gina and Anthony
didn't meet
by accident.

They met
through friends.

Which meant
there wasn't
one moment to stop.

There were dozens.

A picnic.

A concert.

A borrowed canoe.

Somebody's birthday.

Somebody else's barbecue.

An invitation
nobody remembered sending.

History,
it turned out,
had excellent networking skills.

Katya kept crossing out
one rendezvous after another,

while Fate,
without even looking up,
wrote in another.

Tiki watched
the list getting longer.

"So..."

he said.

"We're not changing history."

Katya flattened her ears.

"We're editing."

"Looks more like
history's editing us."

The Time Machine
kept circling the Gunks,

patient as a vulture,

waiting
for somebody
to admit

that destiny

had mutual friends.